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Branding - a pro’s job
Communication - not at all the new buzzword, but still the one thing everyone needs and very few people seem to be getting right.
They say that you should communicate with your wife, so you say: “Honey, I won’t be home on Saturday, going for a round of golf with the guys.”
Her eyes narrow.
Her lips purse.
“That’s nice,” she says and doesn’t speak to you for the rest of the week.
You’re confused.
On the other end, you decide to rebrand and choose a new logo to represent your company. It’s flashy and makes a statement, but after being presented to the world it doesn’t have the effect you expected, at all.
On the contrary, blank stares all round. Once again, confusion. Where did you go wrong?
As far as the narrow eyes and pursed lips go, I’m staying out of it.
But branding? That, I might know something about.
Did you know that the colours you use in your corporate identity, branding or logo sends out a specific message? Each colour communicates something else about your company, and using multiple colours sends out multiple messages - sometimes contradicting ones. Most companies cannot afford this as it shoots your image of reliability right in the foot. A business’ image and core values have to be communicated accurately, consistently, and persistently for it to have any credibility whatsoever. And in the land of consumers, credibility is king.
Managing your brand is not something you can do on the side, once a year or whenever you see your business fading - it is a full-time job that includes integrated communication and branding strategies. Might I add, in the long run it is a job worth doing properly and the sooner you start, the better.
Communication strategists, brand designers, brand managers, copywriters and the like are all equipped to do this. They align your image with what you stand for, ensure that this image stays consistent throughout different mediums and even propose new advertising angles if we think it might be to your benefit.
Communication, hard as it may be, is what we do.
Creating living brands is what we’re good at.
We’ll leave the golfing up to you.
This entry was written by , posted on September 3, 2008 at 4:44 pm, filed under Marketing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.